Libya - civil unrest & now NATO involvement

[belboid]

This was not a national uprising.

and there we disagree. It is plain to see there was far more widespread support than merely in Cyrenaica. Not least in the south - the region which never got any suport from NATO and in other mountain regions. The degree of support within Tripoli is debatable - tho no one could say the rebels have no support there. But even then, that is far wider than just a local or regional rebellion.

 

[claphamboy]

sorry - not trying to be funny - but the shite search functions on the new board mean I cant see where that actually came from or the precise context, and I'm afraid I dont trust you to be wholly unbiased ....

The new boards are lacking a 'search this thread' function, ATM, but it's main search function craps on that of the old boards, I found the post in question, where you included the words 'fairly mild stuff' in about 5 seconds.

Hope this helps.

so, you cant find owt from Amnesty then, which is why you resort to a Torygraph article claiming they said something. Its all rather vague, isnt it?

From those HRW articles - rebels have "beaten some individuals alleged to have supported government forces," and carried out some looting. Oh, the same articles point out that the rebel leadership have condemned such actions. There is absolutely nothing like the appalling acts of 'retribution' you were claiming, and a fairly mild stuff for the overthrow of a brutal dictatorship. I'm sure you've read all the reports about Gaddafi's actions in the Nafusa mountains to which the rebels were reacting too, and realised the context of mass disappearances carried out by Gaddafi supporters there. Something which might just possibly have some bearing on what happened.

 

[belboid]

ta - not quite what dylans said i was saying then.

 

[dylans]

More "fairly mild stuff" for you.

Tawergha. Wiped off the map.

The mostly black town of Tawergha was loyal to Gaddafi. Now it stands empty and the fate of its 10.000 residents is unknown.

According to Tawergha residents, rebel soldiers from Misrata forced them from their homes on Aug. 15 when they took control of the town. The residents were then apparently driven out of a pair of refugee camps in Tripoli over this past weekend.
"The Misrata people are still looking for black people," said Hassan, a Tawergha resident who's now sheltering in a third camp in Janzour, six miles east of Tripoli. "One of the men who came to this camp told me my brother was killed yesterday by the revolutionaries."

Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/09/13/123999/empty-village-raises-concerns.html#ixzz1Xu6WjNdk

where did the Tawargans go? That’s not such an easy question to answer. The rebels rounded them all up and herded them into “refugee camps” in Tripoli. But reporters that went to Tripoli found the camps empty as well, with the only person there, someone looting scrap metal out of one camp, declaring that they had “gone to Niger.”​

Tripoli residents near the camp, however, report that the Tawargans had indeed been in the camp at one point, but that the camp itself was attacked by forces from Misrata. They beat the men, rounded up the women and children and took them away in trucks. They believed the troops were taking them to another camp in another part of Tripoli. That camp too was empty. ​

Black people have been disappearing all across Libya, with rebels arresting people simply on the basis of skin color, but how does a whole city go missing? It may be quite some time before we learn exactly what happened, but we have hints in media reports dating back to June, when Misrata rebels began openly talking about “cleansing” the region of blacks and were saying that black Libyans might as well pack up because “Tawarga no longer exists, only Misrata.”​

Fast forward nearly three months from this proclamation, and we have an empty city where Tawarga once stood. The only sign saying Tawarga has been covered up with a new sign saying “New Misrata.”​

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/13/...n-blacks-turn-up-missing-in-rebel-offensives/​

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Fuck off Ali Salabi! You're making a lot of Libyans angry.

 

[dylans]

Silence and Fear return to the streets of Tripoli

“All people here love MuammarGaddafi.”
“We are from television – could you tell us that on camera?”
“No, no.”
“Why?”
“This is dangerous…”
And it was the same story with others who fervently support the ousted Libyan leader.
“Gaddafi is 100 per cent good!”
“We don’t want this revolution, we don’t know the rebels.”
“We want them to go away.”
“Could you talk on camera? We are from TV.”
“No, no, no thanks, if I appear in front of the camera, they will send a bullet to my head…”
“Who? Who?”
“Who? The criminals! You don’t know them? You call them the rebels!”
“Hey guys, do you remember Ehab, the black guy, he was arrested few days ago, after he appeared on TV… don’t do that!”

The head of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, spoke before large crowds, leaving Libyans in no doubt about who is now in charge.
But while the NTC leader was giving his speech, most of Tripoli’s population preferred to stay close to their businesses and homes.
Those who do not support Mustafa Abdul Jalil and could be seen all across the city proudly waving green flags just weeks ago backing Gaddafi, are now reluctant to leave their own backyards.
“They are afraid because if they go out they will die instantly because there are many people with weapons and guns,”one man, who was afraid to speak on camera, told RT.
With Gaddafi effectively gone, the new authorities have settled down here in the capital, Tripoli. People are chanting that Libya is now a new free country. But it seems there is at least one thing that still remains – fear.
We finally found one young man – Ahmed – brave enough to talk to RT’s crew. This is what he had to say:
“Tripoli is now under the control of the National Transitional Council and we don’t feel we have freedom to talk or to express our opinions. If we say something in favor of Gaddafi they can kill us or arrest us. Of course, many are in fear.”

http://rt.com/news/tripoli-rebels-people-fear-607/

Meanwhile the Loyalist town of Tawergha has been wiped off the map

ebel leaders in Misrata appear to have already decided how to punish Tawergha's people, whom rebels accuse of pillaging homes and raping women during an assault on Misrata in March. Though the rape allegations have been difficult to prove, they have fueled immense hatred.
Now, rebels have been torching homes in the abandoned city 25 miles to the south. Since Thursday, The Wall Street Journal has witnessed the burning of more than a dozen homes in the city Col. Gadhafi once lavished with money and investment. On the gates of many vandalized homes in the country's only coastal city dominated by dark-skinned people, light-skinned rebels scrawled the words "slaves" and "negroes."
"We are setting it on fire to prevent anyone from living here again," said one rebel fighter as flames engulfed several loyalist homes.
Every house, shop, school and public building in Tawergha has been ransacked since the Misrata rebels chased out pro-Gadhafi soldiers. At the time, hundreds of families also fled, fearing reprisals. Rebels slaughtered some of the livestock left behind, the carcasses of which are still rotting in the yards of abandoned homes.

Enlarge Image​

Reuters​

Rebel fighters torched a truck belonging to pro-Gadhafi forces after an ambush by loyalists on Monday in Ras Lanuf.​

Misrata's rebels are also preventing Tawergha residents from coming back and have tracked down and arrested dozens of male Tawergha natives taking refuge in Tripoli, bringing them back to Misrata from the capital for detention and interrogation.
"The revolution was supposed to give people their rights, not to oppress them," said Hussein Muftah, a Tawergha elder who fled to Tripoli last month, referring to the Feb. 17 uprising.

TNC leaders say they will not interfere. Raising the question is this the fate that loyalist towns such as Sirte can expect?

Regarding Tawergha, my own viewpoint is that nobody has the right to interfere in this matter except the people of Misrata," said Mahmoud Jibril, the NTC's prime minister and one of the chief interlocutors with U.S. and European leaders, during Monday's town hall meeting. "This matter can't be tackled through theories and textbook examples of national reconciliation like those in South Africa, Ireland and Eastern Europe," he added as the crowd cheered with chants of "Allahu Akbar," or "God is greatest."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...61187966284.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews

 

[TomUS]

What are the pro-G bunch fighting for? They've lost. Their dear leader has been overthrown. Just about the whole world has recognized the rebels as the gov. It's pretty much over except for a few pockets of their resistance. Their resistance only continues the slaughter. But seems they don't care about slaughter. They even seem to like it.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

Because they are being lead by donkey's. A good leader would recognise defeat and negotiate surrender terms. They're totally isolated. Many of the people on the ground in these areas don't even realise that Tripoli has fallen to the opposition. It seems that everybody expected the last stand to be in Tripoli, but instead it is elsewhere in the country.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

There's a story here about reprisals against the Tuareg:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14948319

It starts off:

Gaddafi's use of the Tuareg as local enforcers during the revolution had stirred up these divisions. Now that the town had risen up and expelled them, reprisals were in the air.

"The Tuareg can never come back here," one Ghadamsi told me in Tripoli. "Not after what they have done in the last six months."

You think, shit that's bad, but then you read:

According to the local town council, our 20-something kidnappers were the remnants of the Tuareg Kataib. This was a local militia used by Gaddafi to suppress the uprising in Ghadames, which began on 20 February, three days after the revolution kicked off in Benghazi.

They had taken to their task, we were told, with gusto, rounding up suspected rebels, imprisoning them and beating them severely with electrical cables.

 

[BlackArab]

I'm starting a one man campaign on Twitter asking three black MPs (Lammy, Abbott & Umunna) to speak out against the racist abuses of black Africans. The silence from MP's of African origin on this matter disgusts me. I intend to to tweet a message to them daily and asking my followers to RT. I am guessing there are a few urbs living in their constituencies and/or know others who do too.

This is the message:

RT if u want @DavidLammy @ChukaUmunna @HackneyAbbott to speak out against racist abuses of black Africans in Libya.

Please if you are as disgusted as me, do the same and let's make this happen. My aim is to shame them into action, I have no idea if I will be successful or not as I have never done anything like this before but have every intention of continuing with this. I will keep you updated. PM if you want to follow me.

Thanks.

BA

 

[elbows]

Political wrangling continues:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/18/libya-ntc-leaders-interim-cabinet

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC), had been expected to announce a cabinet of up to 36 members in an effort to emphasise unity and counter criticism that the body was unrepresentative.
But a failure to reach agreement appears to reflect divisions that are casting a shadow over the post-revolutionary political landscape. Mahmoud Jibril, the acting prime minister, would only say consultations in Benghazi had not been completed, but NTC sources said they believed a deal would be done "within days".
The NTC has been under pressure to appoint some Islamist figures to reflect their role in the revolution, but tensions have emerged between the council and rebel commanders, as well as with Ali Salabi, an influential preacher being promoted by Qatar and its al-Jazeera TV channel.
Rebels in the former enclave of Misrata, who took heavy losses during the revolution, announced their own candidate, Abdul-Rahman Sweilhi, for prime minister. Sweilhi warned of the danger of a "new dictatorship" and insisted the government could not include "symbols of the Gaddafi regime".

 

[BlackArab]

Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East MP) has contacted me to say she is looking into this.

 

[elbows]

Good.

 

[dylans]

And reports of atrocities continue.

The Libyan rebel movement’s primary embarrassment at the moment is that their claims of “50,000″ civilians slain by Moammar Gadhafi looks by early bodycounts to be about 49,000 too many. Bodies are turning up, however, and not the ones the rebels were hoping for.​

Instead, reports have the rebel forces dumping hundreds of bodies in a “pro-Gadhafi” cemetary with no identification, slain by the rebels for some unexplained reason. Just one cemetery reported some 800 unidentified corpses.​

It is unclear if these are slain members of the regime’s military, or simply dissidents. The rebels are also said to be converting a number of buildings into additional prison space, apparently out of concern that the prison-happy Gadhafi regime simply didn’t have enough room for the enormous numbers of people the new pro-NATO regime is detaining.​

In Misrata, the rebels have filled a former school with detainees. None were charged with crimes but were said to have “committed crimes against Misrata” and that the local rebels would decide what to do with them. Reports have them looking for a bigger building since the school is now packed with detainees​

The exact extent of the Libyan rebel crimes will likely remain unclear for some time,as the unexplained depopulation of entire towns and the Misrata militia’s penchant for attacking the refugee camps they ordered black people into has left massive numbers of people missing without a trace.​

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/18/libya-rebels-dumping-hundreds-of-bodies-in-pro-gadhafi-cemetary/​

It was a visit the Nigerian family had been dreading.
They had been hiding in their tiny slum home in a Tripoli suburb since Col Gaddafi had been swept from power, fearing the knock at the door. Earlier this month 20 rebel fighters came, demanding to be let in, shouting "murtazaka".
It is the word every black African in Libya knows too well. Murtazaka is Arabic for "mercenary", the armed men allegedly employed by the former regime to carry out some of the worst excesses of the conflict.
The fighters forced their way into the Nigerian family's home. They beat the couple living there. They stole their possessions and money, abducted the father of the house and turned on his 16-year-old daughter. She told us what happened:
"A group of armed men came to our house. They started knocking, they came in saying 'murtazaka'. They locked my mother inside a toilet. Six of them raped me. They took our belongings and money. My father tried to stop them but they hit him and carried him away."

That was nearly three weeks ago and she has not seen or heard of her father since

One man showed us around another home that had been ransacked. A thick iron bar in the corner of the dark room had been used to beat the men and the women there as the rebels made off with their money and few possessions.
He told us he was glad when Col Gaddafi was overthrown, expecting a better life. Instead he and hundreds of others black Africans have become victims, a soft target.
"This is the African continent, I am an African, this is my land. Is it because of my colour, because I am a black man? We don't have a voice. Who would you to turn to?"
On the outskirts of the city we were invited to film a truck-load of men from Niger who had just been picked up. They too were accused of being mercenaries while being made to chant anti-Gaddafi slogans by leering fighters before being put to work hauling boxes of documents and weapons found in the woods.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14965062

 

[IC3D]

Fairly plausible video of CNN amateur dramatics group in action. Not significant other than indicative of the state of journalism we get these days

 

[BlackArab]

Chuka Umunna has put up 2 tweets:

'Disturbed to learn the values the new Libyan government fought for seem to have been forgotten by some of their forces [URL='http://t.co/Z6pPj1e1'][URL='http://t.co/Z6pPj1e1'']http://t.co/Z6pPj1e1[/URL][/URL]'


'I am writing to the Foreign Secretary with regard to the BBC investigation that found allegations of abuse against African workers in Libya'

Thank you to dylans and any urbs that have shown support, I am not going to leave it here but will continue to speak out on this. As for the other two, Diane Abbott tweeted me this morning that all racist violence was bad (no shit) but said nothing else and David Lammy did not respond.

 

[BlackArab]

Kerry McCarthy just contacted me to say she will also be writing to the Foreign Secretary!!!!!

 

[Divisive Cotton]

interesting account here about one of gadaffi's hidden bunkers

he must have dozens of these all over Libya

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Libya PM says new Libya can be regional model of democracy, urges world help in rebuilding

Jibril speech yesterday, talking about assistance rebuilding and unfreezing of funds, among other things.

“A new Libya is coming to life[ . . . ] a state of democracy, ruled by a clear unambiguous constitution setting forth rights and obligations, that does not discriminate between male or female, one community or another, one political belief or another, or east or west.”

[ . . . ]

Four decades of Gadhafi rule left 20 percent of the population living in poverty, created the region’s worst educational and health care systems, left a collapsing infrastructure and unemployment among youths at over 30 percent, he said. “These are the solutions handed us by Moammar Gadhafi,” he said.

Furthermore, the interim government proper to be formed soon, as forces enter city of Sirte.

There is of course still fighting taking place. Also, inshallah, when it is over there is a lot of work to be done. But the next few months will be as promising as they'll be fraught, and we'll begin to see all the possibilities. Still, it's good to note that the freed areas were already better in many day-to-day terms, such as education, crime, wages paid to workers, democracy (with genuine committees-participation, and now over 100 newspapers) than they ever were before the revolution.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

After mentioning crime, I do realise it's not necessarily the case everywhere. I'm talking mainly about Benghazi.

 

[likesfish]

end of a civil war is going to be very very nasty.
be on the losing side and there's no comfy POW camp and a truth and reconciliation committee.
Won't help that the Gadaffi regime wasn't known for justice or mercy.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

You mean this war, or another one?

 

[likesfish]

most civil wars look what happened to the Tamil's
Iraq most of the slaughter was inter Iraqi even with the Best efforts of the US the bodycount was mostly Shia on Sunni

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

most civil wars look what happened to the Tamil's
Iraq most of the slaughter was inter Iraqi even with the Best efforts of the US the bodycount was mostly Shia on Sunni

It's good thing Libya lacks those kinds of divisions. There'll be a few reprisals yet from Gaddafi's lot. Reintegrating regime elements might be problematic depending how it plays out.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Heikhoo at Speaker's Corner on Libya


Includes some exchanges with Libyans here. Sometimes quite funny. Where I do think he's right, though, is this notion of a 'western model' for others regimes (i.e their puppets) in the region [also to put pressure on other regimes like Syria]. That chimes with what I was saying re: Brzezinski's comments. Furthermore, I add to that the new ruling class will gravitate towards the EU. That may not be the best long term strategy.

 

[dylans]

It's good thing Libya lacks those kinds of divisions. There'll be a few reprisals yet from Gaddafi's lot. Reintegrating regime elements might be problematic depending how it plays out.

You are kidding right? Former loyalists are now the victims of reprisals. Just look at the fate of Tawargha. Look at the fate of those with black skin now accused of being "mercenaries" and now lynched and arrested in the streets or dragged out of hospitals. Look at the fate of members of the formerly loyalist Al Meshashya tribe. You really do your argument no favours by trying to deny these reprisals are taking place

Textbooks are strewn across the floor of the computer and math lab. Pages of science homework are stamped with footprints. A cupboard has been smashed. Bullet holes puncture computer screens and frame door locks.
The Tareq Abu Zeyad middle school lies in ruins. Villagers in this isolated, dusty hamlet in Libya's western mountains say revolutionary forces carried out the attack last week to avenge their past support for Moammar Gadhafi.
The assault, part of a series of reported attacks throughout the region, is an example of what can go wrong as Libyans struggle with how to go forward after months of brutal civil war that often pitted tribes and families against one other.
"I don't know why they would take revenge on a classroom, on a school, which should be for the public good," said Mohammed Saleh, vice principal of the middle school in this town about 110 miles (180 kilometers) southwest of Tripoli. He shuffled through the lab room, shaking his head.
Saleh is a member of the al-Meshashya tribe, which pledged its allegiance to the regime at the beginning of the revolution and harbored Gadhafi's loyalists when they fled from cities liberated by the former rebels.

http://www.myabc5.com/story/15565153/destroyed-school-raises-questions-for-libyans

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

You are kidding right? Former loyalists are now the victims of reprisals. Just look at the fate of Tawargha. Look at the fate of those with black skin now accused of being "mercenaries" and now lynched and arrested in the streets or dragged out of hospitals. Look at the fate of members of the formerly loyalist Al Meshashya tribe. You really do your argument no favours by trying to deny these reprisals are taking place

http://www.myabc5.com/story/15565153/destroyed-school-raises-questions-for-libyans

Why do you think black = loyalist?

 

[dylans]

Why do you think black = loyalist?

I don't. The rebels do.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

I don't. The rebels do.

No, you implied it yourself.

But, yes, there is nasty stuff going on.

 

[dylans]

No, you implied it yourself.

But, yes, there is nasty stuff going on.

. I replied to your claim that "There'll be a few reprisals yet from Gaddafi's lot." and was pointing out that all reports are of reprisals by rebel forces. Yes against those loyal to the former regime such as the residents of Tawargha who are both predominatly black and undoubtedly former regime loyalists but we also know about wide ranging atrocities against random black people regardless of their former loyalties and that the motivation for the abuse of black people is a combination of long standing racism and a perception that all black people are former mercenaries.